Friday, August 27, 2010

Murphy's Law

Murphy is a bastard. Whoever he is, whatever he did, he sure messed it up for the rest of us.

It was a crap day today, lots of drizzle and a genuine bathtub full of filth had made it's way from the road to my bike and clothing. I was a mud-bath moving at 35 k/h.

About an hour from home my pump did a runner from my back pocket. I hit a bump and heard it bouncing down the road behind me. So a quick U-turn and I found that the nozzle had come apart and the spring and washer from the inside were missing. Oh crap.

This road, like the many I had previously travelled over, was of the filthy variety, thus my task in finding and rebuilding my pump was beyond simple. Fast forward ten minutes and not only had I exhausted every swear word I knew (multi-lingual too..) but magically I had found the pieces to my pump, I was away.

So you can imagine during my search I had it in the back of my mind that I could not possibly go without finding the pieces because I would surely puncture.

So I almost smirked with victory when only 5k down the road I heard that familiar hissing sound. My tire was deflated, but I was almost elated, take that Murphy you bastard, I found all the pieces of my pump, this puncture will not stop me!

So apart from getting more grease and grim all over my hands changing the tubes and cleaning off the tyres I waited triumphantly to pump that first breath of air into the new tube. ...

Nothing.

The pump was not creating a seal. Oh crap.

I must have missed a piece on the roadside. Oh crap.

To re-use a great phrase I currently found myself sans paddle and slowly drifting up shit creek. That prick Murphy had me right where he wanted me.

After the second exhaustion of my multi-lingual swear words I had the realisation that I am in fact a complete idiot. The little 'thingamajig' from the inside of the pump was in the wrong way round.

Five minutes later I was on my way.

Lessons learned: Murhpy is a bastard and I am an idiot! Hardly ground breaking I guess.

Over the last week and a half I have had some monster races. 1.2 and 1.1 UCI races in Belgium, it just doesn't get any bigger, any harder or any scarier.

Unfortunately I have been nothing more than pack fodder, never lasting more than half the race. I have been having some real problems with my back and foot stemming from my crash last year. I seemed to have held together until Qinghai lake but now the wheels have completely fallen off the wagon. As a result I am bypassing Tour of China so I can get home and back into some of the rehab exercises and gym work that I obviously did not do enough of previously. Also I have these piddly little things called exams that I should probably (start) study(ing) for. So an extra fortnight of study whilst back home should go a long way.

So that's just about everything, and like they do in Holland, make sure that you